


Behind the Words of a Shadow

by beckling



Series: Mourning/Alone [1]
Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 03:39:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15404118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckling/pseuds/beckling
Summary: Behind the words of a shadow you can only be as a shadow, serve it and make it grow while staying in solitude. Until something changes.





	Behind the Words of a Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: this was written with only the first game in mind, because I hadn't played the second one yet! So "Kazuaki" is meant to refer to Hitori; please don't be confused. Thank you!

“I don’t want to leave you alone, Nageki.”

Standing on the ledge of a building, Kazuaki vacantly stared at the 32-storey precipice underneath his feet. He’d already tried before. First time the height had been too low not to end up with anything more than a long hospital recovery; second time around he’d stayed far too long staring into the void not to be noticed by someone and be violently shoved back inside.

This time should be safe. An abandoned building, a skyscraper once belonging to the humans that’s been in ruins for years: no one would interfere, and the height was plenty enough. From there, the entire city was visible in its evening beauty.

“I’m about to do it, Nageki, I’m about to do it… this time will be the charm. I’ll reach you… You won’t be alone anymore.”

Smiling, he moved to make one step forward. The last things he saw were the ashes of a cruel, vicious, extinguished world for someone who’d lost absolutely everything.

His heart painfully squeezed; a gust of wind made him lose balance and pushed him back. Was it _him_? Finally he heard his voice.

“You really think that’s enough? That it’s going to be so easy? That I’ll welcome you once there?”

Kazuaki filled with gloom.

“N-No… Of course not… You won’t welcome me.”

“My death was longer, more painful and less poetic than yours. You haven’t suffered an ounce of what I’ve suffered because of you. And you still think that by dying you’ll repay me? And you even have the insolence of believing that you’ll have the right to see me again? Stop trying. You can’t die yet. _Not yet._ ”

“Nageki…”

“You know what you have to do. That man is still alive; he changed names, but he’s surely still alive. You have to find him, and kill him for me. This is what I had asked you to do, isn't it? Then why haven’t you moved yet?”

“I-I…” he dripped sweat, but managed to catch his breath. “Yes. You’re right. I’m just a coward…” he then started twisting his face in a desperate and malicious grin. “I’ll kill him… because that’s what you want. Then, after I’m done, I’ll set flames to myself, too. Only that way I can pay up a minimal part of the debt… right, Nageki?” He lifted his head; smiled with an eerie determination, looking at where in the sky he could see the image of Nageki. “I know I won’t ever be able to pay you back completely. But for now, forgive me like this.” Cautiously he worked his way on the ledge and, trembling, he fell back inside; setting himself on his feet again while staggering, he looked outside once more. Nageki’s figure was still there; the afternoon’s light crossed it splendidly.

That shadow shaped like Nageki that so often formed in front of his eyes, blurring all the rest every time, so far had only spoken to him with spite and insistence, but for the first time now it seemed to be smiling sweetly, almost like it was giving a sign of approval.

_Ah… how I missed that smile._

To see it again, there was no other way. He had to maintain the given promise.

***

To support himself at University, Kazuaki had no other choice but to glean several part-time jobs, frequently taking service at night. It was definitely then that his sleep pattern got messed up in that almost surreal way.

Not that he hadn’t already experienced sleep disorder ever since that day. The Shadow was like a broken record that could not be stopped. It talked in his ear, day and night. He eventually became used to it; after all, it was like reading the numerous letters Nageki had left him and that he treasured with care, rereading them passionately almost every day. Nageki never stopped talking to him, and that was reassuring.

In the tiny apartment he’d managed to rent, soon piles of maths and physics books had started stacking up, mostly borrowed from libraries, since he lacked sufficient money to buy them on his own. At high school, he’d never been particularly perceptive at any subjects except those two. Nageki, on the contrary, always had a talent for literature, despite lagging back a bit in the rest. Many times Kazuaki had had to give him repetitions with the other kids at the foster home. And even when they started living alone, he worried that Nageki didn’t pass all his time reading novels. After all, he was still a young teenager and his education wasn’t complete. Kazuaki couldn’t let him abandon his curriculum his peers advanced in school.

It was then that his vocation to teaching had flourished: with Nageki. Explaining concepts with calm and patience, rewarding his brother’s tiresome but gratifying results - it was unexpectedly a marvelous feeling and he'd fallen in love with it. Eventually, Nageki even got invested in the things he taught him, and that was Kazuaki's biggest satisfaction. That way of living gave Kazuaki something to smile about.

Nageki had spurred him, too. Even in this, Nageki had changed his existence, like in many others; in fact, he’d been the most fundamental part. How could he not be thankful? Everything depended on him, without exception. Outside of Nageki, he was nothing.

Remembering these things, Kazuaki’s heart was reassured while studying. Learning to an academical degree the subjects that had accompanied him in the happiest moments of his life had something nostalgically pleasant about it. It could divert his mind from anxiety and absorb him for entire days and nights.

Nevertheless, acting like this only worsened his alienation from the world.

He made no friends at University. He barely talked to anyone; most people assumed him to be a polite but icy ghost.

It couldn’t be helped. Studying was more important, more interesting and definitely less dangerous than engaging in friendly relationships that would have merely distracted him from his true objective.

Holed up in his little room, seating at a precariously small desk and flooded by books and papers, regularly Nageki’s voice would approach him, louder and more urgent every time.

“So you’re having fun? You’re liking this and you’re forgetting about me? You grew soft and abandoned your goal. I knew you’d like becoming a professor. I know that because I watch you all the time. Of course, you have to become that, but for _my_ sake, not for yours. There’s nothing in your life that is worth anything but me, remember that. You’re nothing without me.”

“I know, I know that, Nageki!” Kazuaki would exclaim, shuddering in his whole body. Caught by some exaltation, he resumed studying, scribbling more frantically and vigorously than before. In his heart, he’d reply, on a loop: “I’m doing this for you, I’m doing it for you, only for you... Everything I do… yes, it’s all for you, all for you! It’s like that, it’s only for you. So please, please… keep looking at me! This struggle is all to get to you sooner. _Soon_ … yes, I’ll arrive soon, soon. Wait for me, I beg you!”

Worn out, he lied down only when he’d exhausted his every energy; usually he’d fall asleep on his papers. Upon reawakening, he’d start over, incited by Nageki’s omnipresent Shadow.

***

He was able to graduate top of the class before any other student. His results had been so excellent that the road for the chair of professor was already paved for him. When he applied to St. Pigeonations, it didn’t take long before being accepted.

Finally.

Finally he was here. Of course he’d immediately found out who was the doctor who’d killed his brother. In the months and years that followed, despite it never showed from the outside, the hatred Kazuaki bore towards him behind his back only grew and grew.

He soon had the opportunity of discovering the monstrous secrets of that school. The doctor’s sick entertainments, his lies, his experiments. When he’d once crossed path with Shuu taking delight in killing and dissecting some young students, Kazuaki would have done something, certainly he would, but he kept quiet - yes, he _kept quiet_ \- because his final objective far overpowered any other intention. He knew the doctor planned on exterminating the human race, but he didn’t care at all. He _wouldn’t_ care, until he obtained revenge for Nageki. If anything, all those other wrongdoings that Shuu (or _Isa_ , as he knew was his real name) found pleasure in prolonging served only to demonstrate again just how evil the person who’d killed Nageki was; and therefore to multiply Kazuaki's hatred for him, if even possible.

He simply, absolutely, could not forgive him.

Shooting his left wing had provided Kazuaki a cold and maddening pleasure. _Pleasure_ … something he thought was impossible to feel for a long time. But he knew he wasn’t there for that. He was there for Nageki. Until he got him back, nothing in this world would have been truly pleasurable.

Nageki had said he wanted his body to be wiped out. They must have done _something_ … something to his body. At the mere thought, Kazuaki trembled in rage. When he learned everything about project Hatoful, he had no more doubts. Nageki’s body was still somewhere, and he would have tortured Shuu until he’d surrendered it back to him.

“Nanaki… I was aware you were a fool that couldn’t be trusted... but I wasn’t thinking…” the doctor crawled away scantily, puffing out his words, “I wasn’t thinking you were also a madman! Ahah! Well then, you want to know where Fujishiro is. Oh, but he’s in mister Kawara’s liver! Would you look at that! That’s all there is to it. There’s nothing that's left of him but those infected cells. S...Satisfied?” Shuu spewed some blood, faking indifference and spite.

“Cryogenesis… you were talking about… cryogenesis.”

“But of course. Of his organs, once dead.”

“I see… So he’s still... there. It means that he’s still there. Nageki is still there. Nageki is still there. Nageki is still there. Nageki is… Nageki, Nageki, Nageki, Nageki is…” He repeated that same phrase like a machine, dreariness pouring out of his chest. Suddenly he shouted: “Nageki, you’re still there, aren’t you?! I’ll take you away now… away away away away away away away away away away…” He honed his gaze, possessed. “Away from this hell... ahahah. Yes, away, away...” He shot the doctor again, then he addressed Ryouta with absolute nonchalance.

“Kawara, you know already what you have inside you. You’ll just have to let me. As long as I know Nageki is somewhere, I can’t leave him alone. I… can’t be without Nageki. All my life I was... Without anybody, _anybody_. But then… Nageki-- I thought I’d lost him that time, at the-- But then he came back to me… Now you see, he can’t disappear again. Not again. Not again. Not again. And besides… he can’t disappear forever, right? Right? Right?” The professor’s eyes flickered with despair, confusion, delirium. To Ryouta they looked like the bleakest thing that had ever existed. “He must be somewhere… and now I know. He’s there.” He came closer, pulling out a knife from his pocket and pointing it at Ryouta’s stomach.

“P-Please stop, professor! Nageki w-wouldn’t want any of this to happen!”

Kazuaki scowled at him and pushed his knife closer, furiously roaring: “Wouldn’t want?! What do _you_ know what Nageki would want?!”

“I-I…” Ryouta had never seen his professor act like this and was deeply scared. But at the same time, he could feel that something was moving inside of himself. Nageki’s soul mixed with his own, suddenly. It was as if a desperate spirit wanted to save Kazuaki from his madness. Then Ryouta felt confindent enough to start talking: “Mister Nanaki… I, too… I, too, was there when the humans came to kill all those innocent birds at the foster home. I was only passing by, but I did see that horrible scene and… because of that, I accepted doctor Iwamine’s request, but…!”

From then on, the conversation with Ryouta had been rather brief, but enough so that Kazuaki could truly understand that the person that had started suddenly speaking right after was none other than _Nageki_. He had no doubts, it was real, it was him - his presence was concrete, so concrete that it could even dissipate a Shadow.

Finally it was clear to him that the Shadow had been nothing but a heavy sham of his guilt, whom he’d given the false name of Nageki. The real Nageki was living now… through Ryouta's body - and the words he said couldn’t be but his.

Freed.

Out of nowhere, he was freed.

Meeting again, finally, the true spirit of Nageki had changed him forever, much like Nageki always did, much like meeting Nageki for the first time at that foster home had meant taking the first breath of life. After Nageki’s death, that breath had died along with him.

But from then on, that spirit engulfed and replenished his heart, like a fountain that sprung life and hope out again - after Kazuaki had given up on both.

It was like being reborn. To that well of life that was Nageki, he’d be able to access again, knowing that he didn’t reside inside of him as a Shadow anymore, but as a Light.

Going out of that quarantined building, he took a last glance behind. Nageki would stay with Ryouta, but… Kazuaki wasn’t suffering for this. As long as the only shadow he’d see was the one the sun produced in front of him, Nageki’s true words would stay in his heart and he would never fear loneliness and desperation in his absence.

“There’s no need to carry me under my shoulder, mister Nanaki... Isn’t this rather unseemly after what just happened?” Shuu said, as they got out.

“You are incapacitated because of me, doctor Iwamine. Or should I say, mister Souma? None of the students here are planning to help you, knowing what you have done. So you want me to take you back?”

“Pfft. Do as you please. You are merely a crazed lunatic.”

“Well, you won’t be granted any freedom to stay alone for quite some time, neither from the school or from me - that's for sure. You’ll be treated properly, don’t worry. We’ll be together happily, won’t we?” Kazuaki smiled with perfect serenity; but why then Shuu felt a terrible chill run up his spine? Sakuya, following their gait, listened to everything and nodded emphatically, reminded of what the doctor had done to his brother Yuuya.

“Live and be happy,” the wind whispered, at that moment - Kazuaki and the rescued students were outside, laughing heartily.

Kazuaki turned his head to that sound’s origin; saw nothing. But Nageki was there. It was like he was laughing with them as well. That laughter he’d heard so rarely when he was alive pushed Kazuaki's heart to the limit, purging his memories and making a home inside of him. 

Nageki wasn’t alone anymore. He was with Kawara and with him, and with everyone who ever loved him in that school. In the same way, Kazuaki wasn’t alone anymore, but he laughed with him.

Nageki’s last words, ‘live and be happy’, and his laughter, were now part of him, and would have stayed there, forever.

“Well? Why are we stopping, mister Nanaki?” snorted the doctor. “Hadn’t you the intention of ‘treating me properly’?”

 _“Live and be happy...”_ Kazuaki whispered, mimicking the voice he’d heard twice.

“What… did you say?”

“Oh nothing, mister Souma,” Kazuaki smiled carelessly, once again returning to the doctor. “Let’s go, together. After all, there’s still many things we have left to do…!”

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I actually managed to translate this thing from italian, it was one hell of a feat. But I hope someone will like it. It's part of a series that is mostly centered around Hitori, so I figured I might as well translate this.


End file.
